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Thursday, January 31, 2008

A Day in Muranga

I traveled yesterday to Murang’a for the first time since being back in Kenya. Central Province has been largely unaffected by the crisis and it was refreshing to be able to breathe a little fresh air outside of Nairobi. The Central region of Kenya is beautiful, and this time of year cloud cover on Mount Kenya is scant. We could see the towering summit of the snow-peaked mountain from over 100 kilometers away. It was a wonderful backdrop for the forests of blue gum trees, coffee plantations, and small farm holdings of bananas, mangoes, and beans. In the hill country around Kigetu-ini we met with about 30 rural farmers, many of whom speak only Kikuyu. Their lives have an admirable simplicity and somehow the farmers seem both proud and humble at the same time. They’ve been praying about the conflict in Kenya, but their more immediate concern has been a few brown spots on their passion fruit plants. Each farmer has 58 passion fruit plants and they’ve been nourishing them for the past few months and watching the plants grow. As we meet with the farmers each month, Horace and a pair of local agriculturalists offer advice. The farmers should begin harvesting around May.